Author Archives: eehines

“How on Earth is that a Problem?”

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Harvard has awakened to its problem with grade inflation, and the students it has admitted are having their own problem.

A recent internal report found that Harvard is dishing out too many A’s, and that the current undergrad system is “failing to perform the key functions of grading” and “damaging the academic culture of the College more generally.”

In an honest grading system, taking a letter grade scale of A-F, where A is best, F is failing, and C is average, it wouldn’t be the case that a school, much less an allegedly elite one like Harvard, would be dishing out too many A’s. Under such a grading regime, the large majority of grades would be C’s—after all, the majority of a population clusters around some measure of average, whatever the population is. Maybe 10% of students would get A’s and 10% would get F’s. The rest would be roughly evenly distributed between B’s and D’s.

The grades lower than A would (or should) be spurs to work harder and do better. Those getting F’s would be candidates for dropping, or being dropped, out of Harvard and so no longer wasting their parents’ money.

Consider some numbers reflecting the level of effort Harvard’s students put into their classes.

The average time students spend studying outside class has barely changed, from 6.08 hours a week for each of their courses in fall 2006 to 6.3 hours this spring, according to the report by Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education.

Let’s assume a heavy class load of four classes, each meeting three times per week for an hour and a half for each meeting. For spring 2025, that works out, according to my run-of-the-mill third grade arithmetic, to some 18 hours per week in the classroom. Those 6.3 hours per week per course on “homework” works out, according to that same arithmetic, to 25.2 hours per week of homework. That sums to 43.2 hours per week on classwork.

That’s an outer bound. When I went to a top-drawer private college, I took four classes per week, but those that met three times per week met for one-hour sessions. The classes with hour-and-a-half sessions met only twice per week.

Oh—the strain.

The nature of the students’ problem is made plain by this plaint from one student:

You admitted these students because they have straight A’s, and now they’re getting a lot of A’s, and it’s, like, “This is a problem.” And I’m thinking, how on earth is that a problem?

What these Precious Ones need to understand is that they’re no longer competing with run-of-the-mill high school students for grades. Now they’re competing with a much higher, much more capable, collection of students, students who really are their peers. It’s a different population than the one of which they were members in high school. Of course the grade definition of “average” has gone up, as has the grade definition of “superior” and “best.”

What Harvard’s managers, and especially its teachers, need to understand is that, after explaining this difference (which should be obvious to the students; they are, after all, the cream of their high school classes), there’s no need to discuss the matter further. The students who can’t handle the new regime of grading—being expected actually to work for their A’s—need simply to be dropped from the school.

Waffling Weasel Words

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Recall Heritage Foundation‘s MFWIC Kevin Roberts’ full-throated and enthusiastic embrace of Tucker Carlson who did his own bearhug of antisemitic, racist, and misogynist bigot and Hitler fan Nick Fuentes. Roberts’ behavior has badly—perhaps irrevocably—damaged the Foundation. Now Roberts is further demonstrating his unfitness. Regarding his embrace, Roberts began with a pseudo-apology.

That didn’t play well anywhere, so he fired his chief of staff who wrote the statement he read into the camera.

That didn’t work, either, so,

[H]e blamed the audience: “Not as many people as I thought were ready for a little bit of nuance[.]”

No, wait—

Roberts changed tack. “Sometimes you can make a mistake with the best of intentions,” he said Monday. “My mistake was not saying we aren’t going to participate in cancel culture—we’re not. My mistake was letting that…override the central motivation that I had,” which was “fighting against antisemitism in all its forms.”

The Roberts doth waffle too much, methinks.

It’s time for the Heritage Foundation to terminate Roberts for cause. If it will not separate him from the Foundation in any manner, it’s time for the rest of us to put the Foundation away from us.

“Career-Defining”

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The headline lays it out:

Chief Justice Roberts Faces Career-Defining Decision on Trump

The WSJ‘s news writer centered his headline claim on the current Supreme Court case that concerns the authority a President has (or has not) to unilaterally adjust or apply de novo tariffs. This is certainly a major case with serious implications and outcomes. Career-defining, though? Calling it that is nothing but journalistic arrogance. This guy is not the definer of “career-defining;” he’s just one man with an opinion.

Career-defining certainly would be a momentous move with long-lasting effects.

Here’s another momentous move by Roberts, one from a few years ago, and that still is reverberating. That ruling, in which Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the Affordable Care Act to include a tax aspect that Congress had explicitly considered and just as explicitly rejected, was every bit as momentous as anything the Roberts Court might decide regarding Trump’s tariffs. Career-defining? At least as much as the tariff case. That’s my one-man opinion.

Be Still, my Heart

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Visa and Mastercard, two of the largest credit card issuers, may be reaching a deal with merchants over fees charged merchants. This could settle a dispute that’s gone on for two decades.

Under terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lower credit-card interchange fees, which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years[.]

A whole tenth of a percentage point. That miniscule fraction adds up, some, over many years, for the card issuers, but it does nothing for the individual merchant—or the merchant chain.

To put that magnanimity in perspective, imagine an investor—one of those merchants, perhaps—investing in an instrument that grows at 0.1% per year.

Were he to start with a $10,000 investment, after 10 years, his pile will have grown to $10,100.451.001. After 20 years, the duration of the current dispute, he would have a $10,201.91 golden egg.

Be still, my heart. With friends like this in the merchants’ world, I’ll continue to do business, as much as possible and especially with local mom-and-pops, in cash, which lets the merchant keep all of the money I’m paying for his good or service.

Some Thoughts on Tariffs

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have twisted their panties on tariffs, again, this time showing their lack of understanding of tariff rebates to us low- and middle-income American citizens (in addition to their lack of understanding of tariffs as foreign policy tools. That President Donald Trump (R) has muddled that use is not an excuse for the editors’ failure).

Begin with a couple of things the editors have elided.

President Donald Trump (R) early on said tariffs would let him reduce income taxes—something the editors completed ignored in their present missive. Trump wants to give a $2,000 tariff rebate to us American citizens. While this isn’t a direct reduction of our income taxes, it certainly offsets that much of each of our income tax bills. As a first step in reducing income taxes, it’s not bad.

Then there’s this:

In arguing [before the Supreme Court] that tariffs aren’t really taxes and are mainly a tool of foreign policy, Mr Sauer said “these tariffs, these policies, it is clear that these policies are most effective if nobody ever pays the tariff. If it never raises a dime of revenue, these are the most effective use of these—of this particular policy.”

Sauer went on to say that these foreign policy tariffs do, in fact, generate revenue, but that’s deeply secondary to their purpose, which is to persuade the tariffed nation to change its ways. The editors acknowledged that in an earlier editorial, though only by deeply burying it near the end of that piece. This time, the editors completed elided it.

Then there’s this bit of illogic, even as the editors deride the Trump administration’s logic.

If tariffs are most effective if no one ever pays them [as Sauer also argued], then how are they going to raise the revenue Mr Trump needs to pay those rebates?

Here the editors are exposing the fantasy of their world. “No one” ever pays tariffs because they work perfectly, nations are persuaded, and Hallelujah. No. The world isn’t an ideal place, no foreign policy measure ever works perfectly, friction occurs, and nations adapt according to their own imperatives. Foreign policy tariffs will still raise revenue, even as they do move nations to change, if not completely so, in desired directions.

Finally, this bit of editorial foolishness.

This is a teaching moment for a high school logic class. Start with the contradiction that Mr Trump can both pay a tariff rebate and pay down the national debt. The annual federal budget deficit is roughly $1.8 trillion even with tariff revenue, so paying a rebate would add to the national debt, not reduce it.

Start with the derision of Trump both paying a tariff rebate and paying down the national debt. Of course, both can be done. The rebate won’t, of necessity, absorb all of the current tariff revenue raised, and there’s no reason to expect it to do so in the future. Tariff revenue easily can be committed to, and split between, both goals.

And this: paying a rebate would add to the debt? The editors announce this as received wisdom, declining to provide any facts or logic to support their announcement. That’s because they cannot. The debt arises from spending more of individual and business taxpayer money than the government receives in individual and business taxpayer money. Tariff money is outside of that path. Even if foreign policy tariff revenue were taxes, their expenditure is outside the citizen and business tax revenues the government receives, and spending that revenue adds nothing to our national debt, even if all of the foreign policy tariff revenue were committed to rebates.

And this, straight from the horse’s mouth (which postdates the editors’ missive):

All money left over from the $2000 payments made to low and middle income USA Citizens, from the massive Tariff Income pouring into our Country from foreign countries, which will be substantial, will be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT